Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Aboard a Delhi bound 2 hour flight, I am realising that flying in an airplane, unless you are flying
one yourself, can be a really boring experience. You are strapped to your seat,
forbidden from using your phone, forced to eat meagre portions of sick, gut
wrenching food and above all, expected to behave yourself. You could also find
yourself in the company of extremely gifted people who can make you choose an
abrupt end to your life over bearing their company for a couple of hours.

To add to your misery,
the in-flight crew bombards you with information that is both trivial and, at
times, hard to believe:

Information 1: Lesson
on how to tie your seat belt. I think the idea is just to embarrass large
people. The next time you fly, watch out for the slight, sinister smile on the
air hostesses' face when they talk about the option of an extended belt.

Information 2: Some stuff about oxygen masks appearing
suddenly from somewhere. I always wonder if they allude to God when they
say that the masks would drop from somewhere above.

Information 3: How to stay afloat when the plane lands on
water. Yeah, that's the message about those life jackets 'supposedly' under
your seats. I'd rather believe that wings would sprout out of my back when it's
time to jump. And don't get me started on the 'floating cushions’.

Information 4: Something about emergency exits,
essentially to tell you where to jump out from in case of emergency.

Information 5: What all is available to eat on board.
Probably, the only real deal.

The most disquieting
of all though, is hearing the captain of your flight talk to you over the plane’s
PA system. The pilots, with their characteristic drawl, can give you a sense of
their absolute lack of interest in flying the plane. I have a strong suspicion
that if I sneaked into the cockpit somehow, I would find the pilots playing a
game of Chinese Chequers while an excited, wide eyed, air hostess is trying her
hand at flying the aircraft. Confirming this fear is probably the reason I
haven’t attempted the cockpit mission yet.

Truly speaking, being
an optimist that I am, I could make myself comfortable with this possibility.
Maybe, it’s good that excited air hostesses are the ones flying us around and
not Rocco, the manic chimp. But even if that’s the case and one were to agree
that pilots are there simply to reassure us and to keep us all from jumping off
planes in panic, I can’t argue enough on the uselessness of the random pieces
of information they push to us from the comforts of their cockpits:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain
speaking from the flight deck. We are flying at a height of 13000 meters”.

There isn’t a
fathomable reason why a set of people, none of whom, I presume, treat an
airplane ride as a means to get high, should know this. I can’t imagine someone
getting upset if the plane weren’t as high up in the sky- “Hey, this airline sucks! I just checked- we’re just 10000 meters high.
Take me couple of thousand meters up or I am jumping off this piece of junk!”

“We are cruising at a speed of 850 kms per
hour”.

There were times when
I felt like getting up from my seat and going – “Woot Woot!”, everytime I heard the captain make that announcement
but the enthusiasm sort of died after I got excited for the 43rd time, without
any visible support from my fellow passengers.

“We are flying over the city of Lucknow on to
our right”

That seems just the
kind of information you need to have when you are flying. Think about it,
knowing that there’s a certain city, somewhere to your right (or left), is
cool. It gives you the opportunity to tell a friend you haven’t met for a while
in true Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings
fame) style – “Look to my coming on the
first light of the fifth day, at around 5:30 pm, look to the east, up in the
sky, and I shall wave at you from my window seat- 25 A”

An air hostess just
passed by my seat. She was pushing a food trolley and I watched it with dreamy
eyes and a slightly open mouth, like a wonderstruck man. The reason I find
food trolleys so interesting, besides the obvious fact that they carry a lot of
food, is that it seems like real fun to move them around. It is one of my
wildest desires to run with a loaded food trolley up and down the aisle at an adventurous
speed, at least once in this lifetime.

The captain has
announced that we'd be landing soon. Lights are off, window shades have been
opened and seat backs are upright. The gentleman sitting next to me has
promptly shut down his laptop and opened a thin booklet that looks like a
religious text. I am guessing, he knows about the excited, wide eyed, air
hostess in the cockpit. I too, must pray.

You really like food trolleys? Doesn't it irritate you that they block up the aisles just when you want to go for a stroll? Someone needs to invent a floating food tray that hovers over the aisle like a magic carpet.